Adrian's POV
It slithered through the trees like smoke, curling between the branches and sliding across the damp earth, wrapping around my senses until I could no longer tell where the forest ended and where I began.
The air tasted of rot, rain, and memory, sharp, metallic, and strangely alive. I stopped walking. My boots sank into the wet soil, the sound muffled beneath the weight of the silence that surrounded me. Even the wind had gone still. The forest was holding its breath, as if it knew something was coming.
My breath came slow, uneven. I closed my eyes. There it was again, that pull. Subtle at first, a phantom rhythm beneath my skin, but growing stronger with every passing heartbeat. A pulse that wasn't mine, steady, sure, maddeningly familiar. It echoed faintly in my chest, teasing the edges of my sanity. I clenched my fists, feeling the veins in my hands glow faintly gold and black, divine light and cursed shadow warring beneath my flesh like rival serpents.
